FOOL THE WORLD - THE INTERVIEW
By Sean T. Rayburn exclusively for PIXIESMUSIC.COM

PIXIESMUSIC recently caught up with Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz, authors of the phenomenal 'FOOL THE WORLD: the oral history of a band called PIXIES' and asked them about the book, the Pixies, and any dirt that never made it to print. For the very first time, here is the interview

 PIXIESMUSIC: How did you come up with the idea for Fool the World?

Josh Frank: I was working for the Nederlanders (you know “Rent” The musical.) But I was working for one of the younger ones, Eric Nederlander on his off Broadway show “Love Janis” about the life of Janis Joplin. It was a rock musical sort of in a cabaret style using all her songs to tell her story. I had to watch this show twice a day for about 6 months. I had come from Austin where I had been experimenting with my own theatre company on how to meld music, film and live theatre to create exciting new productions for my generation brought up on video games and wide screen blockbusters. So watching the musical I realized that this was a great format for musicals, the only thing was that it was only covering a part of the age spectrum of audience types. This show was for two generations ago, not mine. So I started thinking, If I did a rock musical like this for my generation, what would the band be, and immediately it hit me, The Pixies. So as I listened to Janis Joplin every night over and over again I started planning in my head the “pixies musical”. Shortly after I called Frank Blacks manager and told him that I wanted to write a musical about him. (This was 4 years ago. At the time they were all sort of down and out, doing quit solo things and generally having a lot of time on their hands.) His manager called me back and said he could meet me the next day for martinis in Hollywood. Was I in Hollywood? I said I was not but was planning on flying there the following day, so we set up a meeting. I went online and booked a ticket and was having a martini with the man the following day. Over the next year as I waiting for funding for the musical and all the told ups that happen when a show idea is in development I kept interviewing everyone I could to the point that I had a ton of interview material. On the phone with my mom one day I was very depressed and I told her I didn’t know how I could possibly fit all this wonder material, this inspiring tale into a two hour musical that might never happen, she suggested that maybe this material was better suited for a book, and the rest was history.

Caryn Ganz: See Josh for that one! I’ll just add that a complete, totally comprehensive Pixies bio was long overdue, and I’ve always felt that the oral history format is ideally suited to rock books—it allows a variety of personalities to come to the forefront, so while Fool the World is obviously the history of Pixies, it’s also the story of a lot of characters who helped make them what they were along the way.

PM: What was your favorite interview for Fool the World?

JF: I had a few. Most definitely first is Kim and Kelly in their basement in Dayton, Ohio with their leaning dog, the dog would lean on you because it was trained for generations to catch up to sheep thieves and lean against them pinning them down till the farmers could come and get them. So the dog spent the whole winter afternoon warming my legs by leaning against me as Kim and Kelly told me quite the life stories. But my dinners with Charles were awe inspiring and tea with Chas Banks in Manchester with the pink Avon Convention most charming, and my afternoon with Steve Applebye in his studio heartwarming. Not to mention my afternoon at 4ad with Vaughn and his 6-year-old child who is a big Pixie fan and has Doolittle memorized. I could go on, but I won’t you get it.

CG: Gary Smith was definitely a high point for me. He’s a truly gifted individual, and his ability to tell stories flush with so many details while also articulating his motivations and hopes is astonishing. Chatting with him, you could see how Charles was first lured back to his apartment for a Sing for Your Supper evening. Talking to John Murphy is pretty high up on the list, too—he’s an amazing wealth of information and details, and his memory is likewise unbelievably great. As far as a pure interview experience goes, nothing beats driving around Asbury Park, New Jersey with Joe Harvard for five hours one Saturday in October, 2004. He told me everything I could possibly want to know about the Boston scene in the late ’80s and then some (and he rigged up a great microphone for my little audio recorder so the quality was awesome). And as for interviews that other folks contributed, Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna’s Steve Albini interview is riveting. Everybody has an opinion about that guy, but I’ve never read anything about him quite as powerful as his own re-evaluation of himself and his Pixies recording sessions.

PM: Was there anything that did not end up in Fool the World?

JF: Very Little we really threw it all in there, except for a few sprinklings of drug stuff having to do with minor characters that we didn’t feel was necessary to talk about more then once, Once you get the point, twice what’s the point, unless that is your point, and its not our point.

Also some Boston history that would have taken the book in to many different directions. I love that stuff, all the other bands from that time that were forgotten or missed maybe if and when we get to a second edition I can throw it in!

CG: Lots of bits and pieces ended up on the cutting room floor, but everything that had real potential wound up in the book. We could have written a chapter on each person we interviewed because everyone had so many interesting things to say, but at a certain point you have to laser in on the goal of each chapter and keep the tangents to a minimum. Plus, people’s memories are sometimes hazy, so if someone said something that seemed a bit off-base that nobody else corroborated, we generally left it out in the interest of getting all the facts correct.

PM: So how did you guys first hear about the Pixies?

JF: As I say in the introduction. In the late 80’s early 90’s it was all about mix tapes and if you were 16 in 89 or 90, that is how most likely you found the Pixies, especially if you were in the suburbs or not in a coastal city. A senior handed it off to me upon his graduation. One side had Pixies and the other Pogues and Robyn Hitchcock.

CG: I remember hearing “Here Comes Your Man” on the 92.7 WDRE (a New York alt-rock station that sadly is no more) in high school and going to buy Pixies cassettes at a used record store. I was also a huge Breeders fan and was delighted to learn Kim Deal used to play in another band (yes, this now seems like a long, long time ago).

PM: What is your favorite Pixies album and why (I think I already know Caryn’s answer!)?

JF: That’s hard. To be honest right now I'm just really into all there solo stuff. I Love black letter days so much for some reason it haunts me and I believe that in about 20 years it is going to be considered one of the great albums of the 2000’s. But pixies album wise I never get tired of Trompe Le Monde or Surfer Rosa. And I adore all the EP’s just as much.

CG: Indeed you do, I am a total Trompe Le Monde defender. I adore Surfer Rosa (one of the most brilliant full-length debuts by any kind of band, ever), but there’s a brutal rawness to Trompe, and I think that album kind of smashes everything that’s great about Pixies together all it once—it’s fast, super-melodic, kind of oddball, and just relentless.

PM: Pixies or The Pixies?

JF: depends on my mood. We went with just “Pixies” for the book to be consistent.

CG: Well, the band kind of made up our minds for us. All the records say Pixies (not “the Pixies”) and according to Gary Smith, that was indeed a conscious choice. Obviously a lot of people (including the band, themselves) took to saying “the Pixies,” but as a matter of pure historical fact, it is just plain Pixies, at least on paper.

JF: If they feel like it that’s great. It would be the most interesting thing to see what they would come up with now. I love how playful they are as musicians and how they embrace growing up, moving forward, looking ahead. If they don’t though it’s what was meant to be. I’m glad they are not trying to force it. I’m happy with what they do solo wise and just look forward to anything they do as musicians. PM: Favorite Pixies live performance?

CG: I’ll give you a lukewarm “mmmmmmmayyyybe.” Of course I’d be extremely curious to see what Pixies could produce today, but sometimes a band’s greatest work is a product of a specific time, age, and cultural mood. A new album could be a fantastic addition to their repertoire, or it could sully an amazing body of work. A lot of people in the book describe Pixies’ career as meteoric, that they burned bright and strong but briefly—perhaps it was meant to be that way. Or maybe they’re like Halley’s Comet (which Charles was considering chasing all those years ago) and they’re ready for their next big trip. In an attempt to stop listing celestial metaphors here, I’ll shut up and stick with maybe.

JF: seeing the first show back at Brixton SOLD OUT, on the reunion tour from the VIP section with my Babe. That was really something. Especially since I had just spent the last 4 years trying to tell the bands story when they were still back in humble obscurity. It was very lonely trying to convince the world of theatre and books that these guys where the most important musicians of our generation, I was glad to see that overwhelming crowd and knowing I was seeing them for the first time in this country in over a decade. The last time I had seen them was when I was a mere 16 in Washington DC with Pere Ubu in the early 90’s. So strange that 15 years later I now have interviewed Both Pere Ubu’s Thomas and Feldman, and all the Pixies. Where the world takes you can be just crazy. I have come to realize that most of the time it’s less likely that a single person fool’s the world as it is the whole world fools us.

CG: Coachella was a true landmark performance for Pixies. It was brutally, ungodly hot all day leading up to their performance, but when they stepped onstage and cranked out “Bone Machine,” the sound was so refreshing and satisfying—people had a truly visceral response. I watched a bunch of songs from up close, then moved back a bit for kind of a long-shot of the stage and all those people rocking along—Pixies had come back to collect their due; it was an exciting moment of rock history.

I did a bit of a Pixies marathon when they played that entire week at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom in December 2004. One night I somehow was given tickets to both the early and late shows, which was a little exhausting, but certainly interesting because Kristin Hersh’s latest band, 50 Foot Wave, opened up the late show. I had recently interviewed Kristin, and thinking about her stories of touring with Charles and Co. in the late 1980s and about her being back together with Pixies again, even for just one night, was pretty cool. All those shows felt like landmarks.

PM

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